Ruling Elite’s Political Will and UN Peacekeeping Success: MONUSCO’s Engagement in the DRC

Contemporary UN peacekeeping missions face an increasingly political challenge from host-state ruling elites in implementing mandates vis-à-vis achieving peace in war-torn countries. Peacekeeping mandates encompass civilian protection, political mediation, restoring the rule of law, and supporting security sector reforms. This article develops a political will theory to explain why elites who formally accept peacekeeping missions simultaneously and selectively challenge the implementation of key components of peacekeeping mandates, and how their political decisions contribute to peacekeeping failure. I operationalized political will through four observable dimensions: political commitment, institutional cooperation, strategic calculation, and implementation behaviour. Drawing on qualitative document analysis and digital archival research, I tested the theory in MONUSCO, using Security Council resolutions and independent reports, and supplemented it with secondary-source literature. The findings revealed that President Kabila and Tshisekedi selectively resisted mandates because they challenged their unconstitutional political authority, security sector autonomy, electoral interests, and judicial accountability. It highlighted that MONUSCO’s withdrawal requests were a deliberate strategic calculation to reduce international scrutiny over domestic security institutions. This research contributes to peacekeeping scholarship by offering a framework for understanding the relationship between ruling elites’ political will and peacekeeping success. The conclusion proposes future directions for theorizing external conditions shaping political will.